20110607

I was slow to wake up this morning, and I became distinctly aware, each time I woke and decided to drift back to sleep, that I was becoming more real, more human, with each passing dream. By the time I was fully awake I was fully human, with all those memories and quirks like I'd been here this whole time.

But the process of waking was enough to convince me I hadn't. Today is the day I started existing. And I feel like I should be terrified--why today? Why me? Why these memories, when they could have been anything? For all I know I could be a weapon, something sent into the future to bring catastrophe to the world. I know I'm not me.

But here I am and I'm not frightened in the least. If I can discard my memories as a fiction, that means there's a whole world out there to discover for the first time. Maybe I'm not free, but until I'm given evidence to the contrary I'll make a spirited attempt at pretending I am.

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The thing about dreams is they're hard to remember. Even when you remember them you're not really remembering them, you're translating some thoughts and images into a narrative that seems like it makes sense. That's why you forget them if you don't write it down right away. It's like how you remember things that happened when you're drunk better when you're drunk, sober when you're sober, sad when you're sad. Your brain has to translate the information into your state of mind.

Sometimes it's a nightmare out there, like the entire universe is trying to tell you something but you can't make it out, because you're not actually dreaming. But we have to put it in some kind of order that makes some kind of sense, or like every other dream it will just slip away.